Tribes: Ascend isn’t coming to consoles

There are no plans for Tribes: Ascend on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, its developer has said.

Hi-Rez boss Todd Harris told Gamasutra that it explored the possibility of putting the free-to-play first-person shooter on consoles, but found the game’s business model prevented it from doing so.

“We do not have any plans for Tribes on console at this time,” Harris said. “The way it went is that we wanted to do the free-to-play model, and there wasn’t a clear path to that on consoles early on. Based on that, we optimized the game around the strengths of the PC, and specifically a keyboard and mouse control.

“Once we decided it’d only be on the PC, we optimized around speed, a quick turn radius, and PC game controls. We’re still interested in free-to-play on consoles, but at this point, we have nothing specific to Tribes on console.”

Tribes: Ascend launched last month to critical and commercial acclaim. Harris confirmed over the game enjoys over 800,000 registered accounts, and said servers were “very, very active”.

He added: “It’s really our belief that for an online multiplayer game, particularly, free-to-play is the best model for gamers and for studios.”